brooklyn-garden-0509.jpgGardens of houses built before 1978 (when lead-based paint was banned) are likely to contain soil with excessive levels of lead, according to an article in today’s New York Times, which means that most Brooklynites with access to a back yard have some work to do. Frank Meuschke, an artist living in a rented house in Brooklyn, had his soil tested at Brooklyn College for $12 and found that it contained nine times the normal amount of lead. The health implications go beyond whether it’s safe to eat a tomato from your garden– Gabriel Filippelli, a professor of earth science at Indiana University-Purdue University has shown a direct correlation between lead levels in people’s blood and how much lead is in the soil where they live. Approaches to dealing with the problem include replacing the soil altogether to putting down sod to mixing in compost and lime. What approaches have readers used?


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. I guarantee that everyone who has soil under their feet has elevated lead, amongst other things, in this or most cities. The questions is -does it matter? Adults with lead poisoning spent a life working around the manufacture of paints or other leaded goods. Not gardening in the city. Ask the Italians in Williamsburgh growing grapes and zucchini how many of their friends and family got sick from lead poisoning.

    I grow my vegetables in pots and planters. Wouldn’t do otherwise in my small yard. My landlord seems like just the kind of guy to dump crap in there over the years. Plus, its right next to the house and street with its flaking old paint and car exhaust. Stuff like this, its coming from all over anyway, dust in the wind.

    Whatever. I grow stuff anyway, wash the veggies. I do not think I will have lead poisoning. I simply wanted to know, plus I run the blog and wanted a local soil testing service -ESAC. Info, not alarmism.

    But its good to test your soil for metals and nutrients, salts, PH, etc. Soil is the foundation of the garden after all.

  2. It’s the New York Times, to them Brooklyn is some exotic unchartered territory like the badlands of Tasmania.
    They have however heard, through reliable sources, that it is a land of dirty dirt.
    The Times may know Paris, and London, and Jerusalem, but it doesn’t know Brooklyn from Shinola.